In existing video playback technologies, because more and more users watch videos online, network bandwidth cost for online video portal websites gradually increases. To reduce pressure of data transmission of a server and save network bandwidth cost, online video portal websites usually use a Peer to Peer (P2P) technology. In the P2P technology, when a user watches a video, a user terminal being used is used at the same time to upload a video resource being watched to another user, so as to reduce data traffic when the another user requests data from a server, thereby reducing network bandwidth pressure of the server.
A conventional P2P technology is usually applicable to data transmission of terminals of a same type. For example, on an online video portal website, a user A watches an online video 1 by using a Personal Computer (PC) 1. If a user B intends to watch the video 1 on the online video portal website by using a PC 2, first, the PC 2 acquires a seed file of the video 1 by using a backend server of the online video portal website; and second, the PC 2 acquires, according to the seed file, data of the video 1 that the user A is watching.
Problems arise, however, with existing varieties of terminals such as smart phones and tablet computers, conventional P2P data transmission between terminals of a same type can no longer implement P2P data transmission between terminals of different types. Therefore, for a server of each online video portal website, pressure of data transmission and growing cost of network bandwidth resources still exist.